IBS Launches 'City Reachers' Holiday Gift Project
International Bible Society (IBS) will once again launch its successful “City Reachers” initiative this holiday season after receiving encouraging responses from last year’s historic effort in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The “City Reachers” project - which delivers Scriptures customized to a particular city in the wrappers of the local newspaper – plans to expand its ministry to cities other than Colorado Springs, where IBS is headquartered. The gift contains the New Testament tailored to a specific city with the hope that a more personalized Bible will encourage inhabitants of that city to read the Bible.
"There are pictures of landmarks on the cover, and there are articles about the city inside, and then there are also testimonies from two people in that city as to how the word of God has affected them concerning their Christian walk," said IBS’s Bob Jackson to Mission Network News (MNN).
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Last December, approximately 100,000 homes in Colorado Springs received the customized Scriptures through the local newspaper, The Gazette. MNN remarked that “this may have been the largest Christian outreach in the area in decades.”
There were complaints protesting the gift, but by a margin of two to one, the response was favorable according to the missions news service. Moreover, Jackson said that IBS has received 20-30 requests from various cities interested in participating in the project, of which half-a-dozen projects are in the works.
This holiday season, IBS plans to reach out to a five-town area south of Las Vegas according to (MNN). The area is in the Laughlin, Nev.; Bullhead City, Ariz.; and Needles, Calif. region, and IBS plans to be distribute the Scriptures on Dec. 11 to about 20,000 homes, Jackson explained.
Founded in New York City in 1809, International Bible Society works in more than 50 countries around the world. The organization moved to Colorado Springs in 1989 and has the purpose and passion to faithfully translate, publish and reach out with God’s Word so that people around the world may become disciples of Jesus Christ and members of His Body. In 1978, IBS published the New International Version translation of the Bible; the NIV is now the most widely read contemporary English translation in the world.
